Can you rotate bones within an IK Chain and allow the IK Target bone to move along with it?
I came up with another solution. I reduced the chain on the IK by a couple and then added IK to the top part of the robot's arm just above the rotator joint. Then I made the IK chain go the rest the way up the arm to the shoulder joint. now I have 2 controllers one that controls the shoulder and top arm location and then the bottom arm can move freely with its own controller bone.